a Gallifreyan mystery found-- answers pending
by Ms-Deunan
Summary: The Doctor's navigational skills are known to be iffy -at best- which is how he ended up losing eight months as John Smith in the 27th Century. His skills are also known for getting him to where he needs to be. This wasn't any different, even if he hadn't been the Doctor. AU for "Family of the Blood" and "Human Nature."


**Disclaimer:** do not own Doctor Who

**Written for:** LJ com writerverse

**Prompt:** random quotes, 1800+ words.

* * *

><p>He comes to, and there is a muted soundtrack of language and alien life moving about that sees him though the processes; but '<em>something's wrong –rephrase as question, has something gone wrong?<em>

_'Self-Answer, no, something's not right._

_'Query: extent of effected area._

_'Self-answer: .363636363636 qp^ diameter.'_ Then-

-Martha Jones is hugging him, arms pulling him into her even as she leans to rest her weight on his form. It lasts. This close he takes her in without thought or effort. _'Eight months, two weeks, two days, eight hours, twenty-two minutes and eight seconds have passed. She is in health, normal-relative for a full-human date-tied to Sol Three 21st Century._

_'Longer than intended. Shorter than it could have been._

_'There's a story here,' _he thinks and asks in a way he hasn't for years. Loudly. Projected. Expectant of another to be listening to the same mind-scape it originated.

_'Foolish'_, he sends next. Stop. Start again.

Foolish old man. There will be no answer.

Better; this is less a complete thought than it is a broken notion.

Control; he can master himself, he will, he does.

Here is where we are.

When she pulls back he reads on the lines of her face relief, profound relief, a lifting to the weight he had knowingly placed upon her countenance. She doubted. Doubted him. Or his Ship's capabilities. Or maybe, even, herself. That he would come back, flit from device to body, as hale and whole as he had been at parting. That she would not be stranded away from her planet long after her time.

He had run the probabilities even as they had flown from physical threat. It hadn't been the best idea, certainly not the safest or the most expedient. It hadn't been the easiest and it was nowhere near the kindest- not with all the variables that could have come into play. It had been, however, the one his Ship supported.

And he who is long lived bowed to She who has lived longer.

He gets a summary of events as he zips behind a convent screen and changes back to the familiar blue suit of clean lines and comfortable sneakers. He listens to the highlights spoken in quick, excited words. He hesitates, not quite taking a moment for himself, and thinks once again: you foolish, misguided old man. When he steps back into the common area, Martha is going on about a near miss and what had to have been a TARDIS ex machina saving them in the form of passage aboard the _Old Town_.

As she throws herself into the tale, with nothing left to do, he takes her words and distills them. A mental exercise to help keep him grounded in the here and now.

Here and now. Hereandnow. Here, now.

Here: a somewhat familiar room, generic art, two beds, a desk, crumpled paper, bland walls; a balcony, open, and drifting in the bustling sounds of- a market? A town square? A stay, longer than over-night. A hostel. No, that wasn't quite right. A lodging, for journeymen and transients alike, for those weary or passing-though. Yes!

Now: nownownow. Now? Bit olive and fig, really, with a dash of zinkfish, an undertone of atium- ah, got it; Now: 47/33/079.9 Galactic Standard.

"Doctor?"

"Here!" and he is, but it's not like she had been letting him get a word in anyway even if he wasn't. Ah well. She had been talking, lecturing, rating even. He'd not been able to take a breath to contribute, not after his verbal answer of 'oh yes, I'm back, I'm me, that was exactly the thing to do- well done!' to her pre-hug and quite hopeful 'Doctor?'

But it looks like he needs to pay attention so he goes over what was said; it had gone like this:

The Family had been: close.

The Family had been: too close.

The pocket-watch and TARDIS had been: abandoned; safely.

It had been: frightening. There had been: running. Also: space-hopping and smuggling.

Captain Drot: not actually a space-pirate.

The _Old Town_ had been: wonderful and a surprise. The _Old Town_ had been: small.

Martha Jones wants him to remember: small = confined = unhappy traveling companion.

Martha Jones wants him to know, this? So not 20th century Earth-England-London-home.

Martha Jones wants him to know: galactic war = crazy Captains.

Also, please note: Legion of Space Romans!

Captain Adel: might actually _be_ a space-pirate, and OLIVA: weird, but on-all both individuals deserve a reward, and speaking of rewards-

-Martha pushes him with a finger between his hearts, there's an echo of sensation that means this isn't the first. She doesn't seemed to care, is saying: "Oh, you owe me. You so do! Half a year spent on that ship. No stops. No ground beneath my feet or air- fresh air!- for six months. _Six. Months!_ Just a submarine in space, plogging along," she is crossing her arms, it is the pose for anger, but her tone is light and her eyes are elsewhere.

Contradictory information, all of it. He loves humans, really, he does. They can just be so… so flat sometimes. He takes a reading, of pupil dilation and pheromones, only her body language is all over the place and her words hardly ever go with intent. He takes a closer reading; one that's not-quite-admitted-is-possible-for-Companion-sanity, and finds that she is happy, not angry. Stressed, perhaps, but not overtly. He thinks there is an undercurrent of wistfulness, maybe some resentment as well.

Honestly, it'd be easier if the lot of them weren't psi-null. There is something to be said about certainty, after all.

"I mean, there was the gallery of course. And it's not like I had nothing to do, what, with my books. But once I got you off planet? They didn't even bother to chase us! Some grand hunters they were. You, Doctor, were wrong. Absolutely wrong.

"And I'm thinking, a week or two in the sun. Relaxation and a gorgeous view of sun and sky and beach. You can't shut me up somewhere. I refuse," and she nods, as if everything has just been decided and not one specific thing. "But first, you're going to take me home. You will not time-skip ahead. You're driving's too awful for that. Obviously. I imagine you can do your own thing for a week. No. A month. Home. Then somewhere sunny. A beach planet? A resort, maybe. Then, we carry on. Business as usual."

Her hands have taken to her elbows and he can see from her knuckles the force used to hold them. A hug, of sorts. He has learned to read this as self-doubt. She says: "I mean, is that okay?"

"Yes. Oh yes. No problem. Well, it shouldn't be. No. Not at all, actually, now that I think about it." He rushes, tripping over words as he takes a step forward, toward his Ship. He can understand this, of her, at least.

But she doesn't follow as he starts to lead the way. So he tries again and says: "Yes Martha. That sounds just fine. Home. Earth-locked. A month."

He agrees, but of course he does. It has been a long time indeed since he has intentionally kept them from their own.

He starts for home again and she follows. She grabs a backpack with patented fabrics that would protect its contents from just about everything, except a Dalek. He takes nothing. He is halfway to the door when he decides he rather leave something behind, the truly horrible brown plaid jacket with suede elbow patches he had been wearing for the last eight months.

He watches as it mournfully flops on carpeted floor with a vindictive glee.

In fact, he tosses the reminder of the outfit next to the jacket and dares them to say anything as he closes the door.

He is not stopped by reception, a flash of badge and a charming smile sees that the two-night/three-day stay is unquestioned and off the books. He had been right about that too; _Lodging of Clendent_, says bronze lettering on a black banner, _Come And Stay Awhile_. Outside he turns left, then right, and stone walls give way to an open-air market district.

A cloudy near-rain atmosphere hurries along the colorful population of mid-late noon hagglers. The banners are red now and marking the zones in black and gold. Nostalgic paper lanterns are strung between posts and a wind from polar-east bobs them about.

His Ship had picked a merchant planet, he sees, one of the nineteen to rule through trade in the history of current time. He has never been here, doesn't even know the planet's name. Not yet. Not from just its pageantry, that which is so similar to her sister planets.

It doesn't matter.

He knows where his Ship is, can hear her calling.

"What," Martha's words are soft as she moves to travel closer with him down the emptying lane between equally emptying stalls. "What do you remember? About being John Smith, I mean."

He doesn't want to answer, doesn't know what to say.

The truth is he doesn't want to remember, doesn't want to think of being anything than he is. He had thought himself prepared to loose what little he had left, prepared to simply not be. That it would be freeing, perhaps, to have a sense of current-immediate-belonging as one feels with a life-long friend, a knowing that he was not alone.

And he had that. He hadn't been the Last of His Kind. He'd been as Martha Jones, even when running from the Family and being smuggled as refugees along the intergalactic highway. But he hadn't been prepared. Not really. Because coming back to himself? Experiencing John Smith, even in retrograde, made a lie of his ability. John Smith had been happy. He loved with a sense of awe, teetering between reverent wonder and fear, had been in love. He had been without guilt, sad at times when memory pressed, but sure in one thing: it was more than alright to be. That it should be done, that life should done without regrets for its length was ever shortening.

He remembers: insisting, downright arguing, with Martha about the unexpected detour. He isn't ready to leave. He wants to sign on to the _Old Town_ with its lonely Captain and her small metal friend. He remembers sitting to write a mock-up for the new grant proposal, and the handful of insults he wants to include to the Academy for never before suggesting he actually research stars while traveling between them. In this argument that they seem to be having more often now, Martha is angry, but then, so is he. Still, he tells her "yes" when she asks him to stay in their room for the next two days as she runs home for something. It would take that long to get his letter the Academy just right, and the _Old Town_ was land-locked for repairs. There was time.

He remembers: sitting in the gallery relaxing on its warn sofa, watching her hands as she says "in my youth I had been an artist in a house of artists. Professional acclaim came as one who worked with precision. This," and she is lifting brush from self-made canvas and dipping it into a swatch of the same paint drying on his chin, "is a deviant expression of that ability. To paint is- was something quite barbaric. Twas ever thus says I: to wed the weaving to the painting by self-willed hand? Aye me! If caught, the Lord Mentor would be scandalized." Her hand has stopped all motion, and when he looks, it's not a smile that she gives; it's a toothy grin.

He remembers: feeling small, standing in the gallery before a nebula weaving stardust into life. Of being nothing to the universe as it spins and twists and jumbles all together into a knot that will surely outlast eternity. It is a feeling and a splendor not made less by the company, two murky reflections against a galactic sky.

He remembers: laughter and toxic smoke yet more proof of his inability to cook. He is in a yellow kitchen with mismatched furniture holding a ceramic pot, charred and cracked and irreparably stained. He's trying to do something with it as OLIVIA, hovering into his space, is an expanding metal blowfish at first scan of the mess being made with cleaning solution. The reprimand, when it comes, is reverberating censure: "Oh, mistress will not like this." OLIVIA goes higher, as if an aerial view would make the mess look better. OLIVIA says "ALERT!" It's loud and sudden and he's fumbling with a second pot, soapy water going everywhere, even as he pleads: "Oh no, no. Don't do that. Please don't. I'll fix it!" But it's too late or he's simply ignored, for OLIVIA sends though the halls of the ship: "ALERT, Mistress Adel and Martha Jones to Kitchen. ALERT. John Smith in the Kitchen with Hazardous Materials!"

He remembers: a cab ride that ends at a wayport and being pushed towards something that couldn't possibly look less space-flight capable if it tried. He doesn't like the look of this, at all. There is a bearded man greeting them with "call me Cap'in, I'm only Ilyn Drot on paper" and cannot find it within himself to be relieved by the friendly smile thrown their way.

He remembers: childhood friend Martha Jones coming out of nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. She's pulling him from his spot in the Library, talking nonsense, but insistent that they were in trouble. He's not sure about this, not at all, but he can't remember the last time she's asked him for something. And it's not like he doesn't have the comp-time, so if she needs a month of cross-country traveling to feel better about, about whatever it is, he can do it.

He remembers, he remembers quite a lot, but there are gaps. A repeated notion of something off, something that is wrong -no, not wrong- something that is but should not be. Like preja vu, only nothing like it at all. It is as if something has happened that was not to be. He tries not to think on it. Such things had been normal, once. A reshifting to the nexus, growing pains that were over quickly, and meant Counsel Interference. He tried not to think of the last time there had been a Counsel to ply their hands with perfecting the time-lines.

And the truth is, he pushed that man and his memories into near non-existence around the time Martha first thought to hug him hello. John Smith is in a room in his mind-scape behind a barred door. Near, but not, to those who he had once been.

He doesn't like John Smith.

He doesn't like him at all.

But then, he has something of a history with past-lives.

"I remember," he says even as he tries to stall for a lie that is not, in some fashion, a truth. Hands in pockets he has not had access to in eight months, he finds a slip of paper. He unfolds it and finds it is the most important thing in the universe. And he stops. Stops eight hundred and twenty-two feet before his Ship the TARDIS. Stops, because he cannot bear to continue.

It's a sketch, in old fashioned graphite pencils, 8B and 2H. It doesn't look like anything. A scribble, a doodle, or with artistic leniency, a backdrop of stardust as it would exist in the reflecting light of two sources and a foreground of stylized poetry.

_**/I, the conscious self, housed in this form**__ /self-singular, time-sense: present /absent of outside perception  
>hold <em>_**/want to correct the lack of**__ /undiscovered node in third column of the Resolute Casting Equation  
>moment before wind and leaf meet first and new-addition star on warming ground __**/Gallifrey**__**/House**_

/I, the conscious self, housed in this form

_**/self-singular, time-sense: present**__ /absent of outside perception  
><em>_**/without substance**__ /the moment of final decomposition /the non-linear intendant /the Other  
>to take place /occur __**/link subject and predicate nominative**__  
>finite resolute /uncounted times __**/cessation**_

I, the conscious self, housed in this form /self-singular, time-sense: present

_**/absent of outside perception**__  
>query for thought /evaluate __**/denotes question statement, time-sense: past-present present-future**__  
><em>_**/I, the conscious self, housed in this form**__ /self-singular, time-sense: present /absent of outside perception_

"What," he asks, because it is all he can say: "What?" He reads it again.

There, in the form of Old High Gallifreyan, lay the words as if they had been recorded before the end-days of the Time of Legend. Written in a language of 10,000,000,000 morphemes, each with at least three meanings that can only be determined through a study of context as dead and gone as his planet.

There, with the structure of three-four-three, reminiscent of the widely popular and all-together pompous Lord Preceptor Piroin Alchimedic, is a Modern Gallifreyan formula utilizing the methodology of the Patrexian Numbers system.

And the passage! These ten words so beautifully written without the blemish of hesitation, have the correct emphasis and the absolutely perfect ratio of negative-space to make the third word of the first set to mean both Gallifrey-proper and family-House.

Such precise manipulation of archaic language and common form, post-modern in its presentation, would be impossible to replicate without a hand intimately knowing how to reduce the four-dimensional origins to only two!

This is impossible.

This is an absolute impossible oddity.

No artist could render a copy so unquestionably Gallifreyan.

"Martha, what is this. Where did it come from?" Because it's not his hand and he does not remember this.

"Don't know. Let me see."

He doesn't let it go, doesn't let her touch it. Still, she must see what she needs to make some sense out of the nonsensical.

"It looks like one of your diary pages- journal. Sorry. Journal. Anyway, it has that same kind of, I don't know, faded blue tinge. With those thread bits pressed into its pages. Isn't it yours? I mean, It's John Smith's, has to be, right?"

"No," he says because it wasn't.

"No," he says again, because he is almost irreparably stuck on this fact.

"No," he says, because this doesn't make since unless it absolutely does and there's someone else out there and there is only so many possibilities with it having been in his pant pocket and-

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"TARDIS!" he throws back, slowing long enough for her to catch up, then he's grabbing her arm and pulling her behind him as he races towards his Ship and answers. "Faster!"

"What," Martha tries, dodging a near-human in a purple, "I don't understand. Is it that important?"

"Yes," he says, because it is. "Yes, yes, yesyesyes. Maybe: No. No maybe. Absolutely yes!"


End file.
